Navigant Research Blog

Seeking Reliable Power, Hospitals Go Local

Noah Goldstein — April 21, 2015

A few weeks ago, Hitachi in India announced that it is working on a pilot at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) hospital in New Delhi that focuses on energy efficiency. The project has three major goals: to upgrade the facilities of AIIMS, install a highly efficiency data center, and incorporate the data from the energy management system (EMS) to optimize the facility’s overall performance. This is the latest example of energy management coming to the fore in healthcare facilities. The drivers and barriers for advanced energy management in healthcare are detailed in Navigant Research’s recent report, Energy Management for Healthcare Markets.

The energy management for healthcare market expected is to grow from $949 million in 2015 to over $2 billion in 2024, driven by government regulation on one hand and corporate strategy on the other, both working to keep costs low for hospitals. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, energy conservation measures have been employed by hospitals at high rates, yet our research shows that the integration of these system with digital EMSs is less universal.

Surviving Disaster

Improving the energy posture of hospitals can also help them become more resilient. After events like Hurricane Katrina (when the failure of hospital power systems was citywide and catastrophic, as revealed in Sheri Fink’s devastating account, Five Days at Memorial) and Hurricane Sandy, hospitals are incorporating plans to function without utility-based power in the face of a disaster. At the simplest level, a highly energy efficient hospital running with efficient HVAC and lighting systems would need less power than an inefficient one. But the hospital’s ability to leverage onsite backup power can make the difference, literally, between life and death in a disaster.

One Wisconsin healthcare system has taken the concept of resilience to its logical extreme. Gunderson Health System has endeavored to generate its own power from a myriad of sources. This includes burning biomass from waste wood, employing dairy waste digesters, using methane captured from local landfills, and gathering power from wind turbines on farms in the area. Gunderson claims to be the first energy-independent healthcare system in the world. More significantly, the system presents itself as an example of a locally powered healthcare facility, proving that it’s integrated into the local community.

Going Micro

Unlike Gunderson, most hospitals use diesel generators for power backup. These generators are seldom-used but ready to deliver backup power when needed. And if you’ve ever been near the hospital when they’re running, you know how unpleasant they are to be around. While the price of crude oil has dropped in global markets, electricity prices have not universally fallen. The use of fossil fuel-based generators as backups poses an interesting question: If the price of gas stays low, as forecasted, will hospital facilities shift their use of petroleum generators to essentially become microgrids, to save costs?

Although most facilities are not prepared to do so at present, it’s highly likely that all new healthcare facilities will introduce more flexible backup power, to avoid more Katrinas in the future.